The 1998 NBA All-Star Game in New York was the last one with a compelling story line, writes columnist Mark Heisler – even if it was wholly manufactured by NBC, heralding Kobe Bryant, then a 19-year-old Lakers reserve voted a starter, as a rival to Chicago Bulls legend Michael Jordan. Will Sunday’s game at Staples Center be anything more than a series of dunks, uncontested 3-point shots and matador defense? (Photo by Mark Lennihan, The Associated Press)

It’s a great time for the NBA, once a “bush league” – a quote from Wilt Chamberlain on a 1965 Sports Illustrated cover – now second only to the NFL among American spectator sports, without football’s dire issues involving head trauma that threaten youth participation and growth.

Having hacked its way out of the bushes, the All-Star break finds the NBA robustly prosperous with Forbes projecting all 30 teams to be worth at least $1 billion and the average at $1.7 billion.

In 2014, when the Clippers became the first team to actually sell for 10 figures – at $2 billion – Forbes projected their value at $575 million, just above the NBA median of $550 million.

In other words, the projected value of the NBA’s 30 teams has tripled in four years.

Aren’t we missing something? Oh, right, there’s the All-Star Game, itself, the ritual at the heart of this pageant even if it’s now mostly dunking, firing from the arc and getting out of the way, as in 2015 with its 133 3-point attempts and the last two, which the West won 196-173 and 192-182.

As a celebration of competition, it went out of business years ago, turning off insiders like ESPN’s brave Jeff Van Gundy, who campaigns to cancel the event on what is effectively the league’s own air.

In a recent game, Van Gundy advocated an extra selection to honor veterans like Dirk Nowitzki, only to be reminded of his stance against the event by his play-by-play partner.

“That’s only if you keep it,” Van Gundy said. “We should get rid of it.”

No such luck.

Declining all-star interest is a phenomenon across all sports all-star games, which once sounded cool. As that faded, they became important to schmooze the advertisers paying the freight with their corporate budgets.

Baseball, the ideal game for the format, invented the All-Star Game in 1933, although its event has faded, too, with all involved caring ever less about it.

The Dodgers would be horrified if Clayton Kershaw was asked to go more than one inning, delaying his next start – much less the three innings Sandy Koufax and Juan Marichal each worked in 1966 as the National League won 2-1 in 10 innings.

The NBA didn’t even play an All-Star Game until 1963 in the Sports Arena, showcasing the league’s move west with the Lakers in their third season here.

A spirit of All-Star competition endured through the NBA’s surge in the 1980s with bragging rights so precious to the charismatic arch-rivals Magic Johnson and Larry Bird.

The 1998 game in New York was the last with a compelling story line – even if it was wholly manufactured by NBC, heralding Kobe Bryant, the 19-year-old Lakers reserve voted a starter, as a rival to Michael Jordan.

Kobe made it real in his inimitable style, shooting 10 of the first 11 times he touched the ball … which Lakers publicist Raymond Ridder, sitting courtside, noted wryly was “one less shot than he took in the rookie game” the year before.

Jordan outscored Bryant 23-18 to win the MVP, noting he had planned to cruise through the game but had to turn it up “to make sure Kobe didn’t dominate me.”

In the 19 years since, the event degenerated to the point that NBA Players Association president Chris Paul, injured and watching last season’s game on TV, decided they had to fix it. Showing the difficulty of the task, the best the league came up with is this season’s joke, letting captains – it turned out to be LeBron James and Steph Curry – choose up sides.

The captains chose in secret. Having installed a pecking order to spur interest, the NBA then hid it.

Of course, there were the usual complaints. Russell Westbrook, ever attitudinal, hit the roof when Portland’s deserving Damian Lillard was chosen over OKC’s Paul George. When George was chosen to replaced injured DeMarcus Cousins – over the Clippers’ deserving Lou Williams – it was as if the league just wanted to keep Westbrook quiet.

Actually, the anguish is the last cool thing about the event, making the “All-Star” rosters a meaningful distinction in the NBA.

In the NFL, which plays its Pro Bowl at season’s end instead of in the middle, half the league seems to be in the game after injury dropouts and no one from the Super Bowl teams.

In baseball, in which every bedraggled team must be represented, “All-Star” can mean multitudes including Bryan LaHair, who lasted three years in the majors, or Jason Vargas, now on his fifth team with a career 4.28 ERA.

Of course, the NFL has already tried having captains like Jerry Rice and Michael Irvin choose sides (after Commissioner Roger Goodell said he was “not inclined” to continue the event). Fans kept tuning out in droves for three seasons before they went back to the old format.

In real life, the NBA is now at a new level with its gusher of a TV contract paying each team almost $100 million per season. In 2011, the last All-Star Game at Staples, two-thirds of the teams lost money. Forbes’ projection this season shows one losing money: the Cavaliers with their $120 million payroll and tax repeater $54 million assessment.

All-Star Weekend is now a three-day advertisement with endless coverage, too garish to love, too broken to fix, too big to drop, existing in its excesses to assert the game is big and getting bigger … whether that’s a fact, a brag or self-delusion.

It’s actually a fact in the NBA now as never before with rising TV ratings in the coveted young adult demographic and burgeoning audiences overseas, especially China.

As for All-Star Weekend, we got through the others by whatever means were necessary, including hiding.

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